Month: December 2013

In a video recently posted on the Google Webmaster Central Blog, Maile Ohye (the Developer Programs Tech lead at the company), discussed a beginner’s approach to building an SEO strategy for a website. Whilst this is, by no means, the amount of work that can be completed by an SEO professional, it is certainly a start for anyone interested in optimisation.

Ohye outlines 4 steps to building an SEO strategy:

Understanding the ‘searcher persona’ workflow
Basically, people will search for a particular query and will then select a website from the ranking and display shown. They will then read the page content and will be drawn in by the conversation and motivation. It is important to create a seamless searcher workflow.

Determining company and website goals
Ask yourself a number of questions – what is your business’ goal? What can your product or service do that no one else can? What does success look like? What components are involved? How does your website play a part in this success? What do your competitors do well?

Auditing the site to best reach the audience
You need to think about what sorts of groups you are targeting and where they are located. Then, think about their objectives and whether their query terms match your content. There is no point in saying “search friendly” when everyone searches for “SEO”.

Executing and making improvements
You can use Google Webmaster Tools to further monitor and optimise your website. Improve search with better marketing, improve your page content to upsell your products or services, and offer a great experience and remarketing to encourage repeat customers.

Unfortunately, there are a number of obstacles that must be faced when creating an SEO or even just an online strategy. Fortunately, Ohye outlines many of these in the video (including people only being concerned with their own role and needing to know what sites competitors are linking to) and provides a few suggestions on how to overcome them.